Sting, the trio\u2019s bassist and singer, composed all their hits, from Roxanne to Message in a Bottle.<\/p>\n
Consequently, he receives by far the largest share of the group\u2019s royalties.<\/p>\n
The Police recorded five albums which were released between 1978 and 1983.<\/p>\n
The original agreement acknowledged the, at times, crucial contributions of the other two members, such as Summers\u2019 guitar arpeggios on Every Breath You Take.<\/p>\n
The verbal agreement reached in 1977 was later formalised through a written agreement in 1981.<\/p>\n
A further agreement reiterated, albeit vaguely, the terms in 1997, before the existence of streaming.<\/p>\n
The terms were reaffirmed in 2016 in an agreement intended to settle all financial disputes between the members of the group whose relationship by then had long become strained.<\/p>\n
The term \u201cstreaming\u201d, however, was not explicitly mentioned.<\/p>\n
The dispute concerns the classification of revenue generated from services such as Spotify, Deezer and Apple Music for the purpose of royalty distribution.<\/p>\n
Streaming revenue is traditionally divided between so-called \u201cmechanical\u201d royalties, collected for each reproduction of a composition, such as records, and so-called \u201cperformance\u201d royalties, paid for the broadcast of songs, for example, on the radio.<\/p>\n
But only mechanical royalties are included in the 2016 agreement, something Summers and Copeland consider contrary to the spirit of the original 1977 agreement.<\/p>\n
They are demanding their share of all streaming revenue. Representatives for Sting, who sold his catalogue to Universal in 2022 for a reported $250 million, have called the legal action an \u201cillegitimate\u201d attempt to reinterpret the agreement.<\/p>\n
They argue that some of the sums paid could actually constitute overpayment.<\/p>\n
-Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sting, the trio\u2019s bassist and singer, composed all their hits, from Roxanne to Message in a Bottle. Consequently,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234370,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9092,66429,5837,11164,11783,24369,10712,1349,156,14768,138858,2740,35698,2959,78,7324,6431,1132,111,139,69,675,26789,6747,4625,544,57437,3291,199,2743,1680,197],"class_list":["post-234369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-against","tag-bandmates","tag-battle","tag-began","tag-brought","tag-cent","tag-claiming","tag-court","tag-entertainment","tag-every","tag-expolice","tag-former","tag-hearing","tag-high","tag-in","tag-lawsuit","tag-londons","tag-million","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-police","tag-royalties","tag-royalty","tag-singer","tag-some","tag-sting","tag-streaming","tag-take","tag-unpaid","tag-wednesday","tag-you"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}